Mbeki defends beleaguered health minister against critics

South African President Thabo Mbeki hailed his embattled health minister as a heroine and likened critics to "wild animals" after she came under attack for her policy on Aids.

Mr Mbeki's defence of Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, known as 'Dr Beetroot' for her promotion of the food as a remedy for the disease, caused more dismay among Aids activists demanding her dismissal.

Nobel laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu weighed into the increasingly polemical debate about the country's Aids policy, saying "too many died unnecessarily because of bizarre theories held on high," in a thinly-veiled reference to the president and his health minister.

In a speech on Friday Bishop Tutu said that the heroes and heroines killed in the anti-apartheid struggle would have been shocked by the devastation of Aids which kills 900 South Africans every day.

"They would be distressed by the latest episodes in the saga of a health department that has been less than efficient and has presided over the vast deterioration in health standards of our land," he said.

For years Mr Mbeki has been accused of playing down the extent of the Aids crisis. He has steadfastly stood by his health minister, the target of national and international condemnation for her mistrust of anti-retroviral medicines and her unorthodox views on the virus that has infected an estimated 5.4 million South Africans - the highest number in the world.

Writing for the weekly newsletter ANC Today, Mr Mbeki said history would honour the minister as "one of the pioneer architects of a South African public health system constructed to ensure that we achieve the objective of health for all our people, and especially the poor."

"In our tradition as the ANC we do not normally celebrate our heroes and heroines publicly, such as Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, until they have died," he wrote in the online newsletter on Friday.

Nathan Geffen, policy coordinator of the Treatment Action Campaign, said the movement was undeterred and would continue to press for the health minister's dismissal. Mr Geffen said the minister's failings included the slow provision of drugs to prevent HIV-positive mothers passing on the virus to their child, delays in treatment to people with Aids, and her department's failure to provide proper levels of expertise.